A goal of mobile broadband aims is to offer seamless wireless communications services essentially everywhere. Macro cell deployments often provide acceptable service coverage, while some areas such as important and/or very populated buildings are subject to dedicated solutions. However, in some other areas, macro coverage is insufficient, and it is not economically viable to consider dedicated deployments. Examples include underground garages, tunnels, and apartment buildings.
One appealing solution in such cases is to deploy repeaters. A repeater receives radio signals at one antenna and forwards the received signal over another, possibly after some amplification. Repeaters (amplifies and) forwards both the signals and noise, which may have a negative impact on the donor cell. All received signals at the pick-up antenna are repeated—no knowledge about the communication protocols is needed. Furthermore, the donor cell and base station may be unaware that the link is via a repeater.
However, repeated signals transmitted by a repeater from one antenna may interfere with signals received by that repeater for repeating at its other antenna. Furthermore, if the gain level of the repeater is set too high, the repeater may cause instability in the overall network. Therefore, the configuration of signal gain and other operating parameters of a particular repeater can significantly impact the effectiveness of that repeater, as well as that of mobile communication system overall. Nonetheless, the optimal configuration of a particular repeater may depend on the characteristics of its operational environment, including certain characteristics that may change with time. Thus, optimal configuration of repeaters may depend on measurements made after repeaters have been installed and are operational. However, manually obtaining such measurements and configuring repeaters after installation may be time-consuming, difficult, and expensive.